Help on XSL XPath

I am new to xsl development , however I am determined to work on xsl porting project from Xalan interpretive to xalan compiled processor.

cut short version template is given below. app.xsl references generic.xsl and makes a template call with parameters. because I am trying to learn too many things at a time , i am finding difficulty in replacing xalan:evalaute() function with standard XPath predicates.

Please help me with some clues on replacing xalan:evalaute with standard XPath expressions. Also some guidence to gain sufficient knowledge to replace such a calls made in several other places in the entire project.

I am using xsltc for converting these static xsl files into translet for performance reasons. So there was a need for replacement of evalaute calls

If I'm not mistaken, xalan:evaluate will take a string and evaluate it as if it were an XPath expression. It exists specifically because XSLT doesn't provide that ability.

So there's no easy way to get rid of it, especially if (as in your example) you have unrestricted input strings. It would theoretically be possible to write an XPath parser and interpreter, but XSLT would not be my first choice of language for that. Budget several months for an XSLT expert to do that. And expect much worse performance from it than from xalan:evaluate.